Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 345987,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/345987/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 377,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "passionate appeal to the President who was sitting there; that, “please, as you honour Kenyans this year, remember the man who led the team that brought this to come.” I mentioned specifically my good friend, a humble servant of God, the hon. James Kimathi. It saddened me that when the list of honours was published, the hon. James Kimathi, who not only did the designing of this refurbished Parliament, which is now the symbol--- When you talk of the symbol of the National Assembly, it is the refurbished Chamber. Not only did he do this, before he did this, he went and did the famous Tanzanian Parliament in Dodoma. How can we not honour such a man? How many people ever get to do something like that, and yet you find all sorts of people carrying these honours? Today, Thika Road is an engineering edifice. All the praise is going to the Chinese, but how many people know that the person who designed Thika Road is my good friend, a humble servant of God, Eng. Matu? How can we not honour a man who has altered the landscape of Nairobi like that? The Chinese were builders but the designer was Eng. Matu. How many Kenyans know about Eng. Matu today? Eng. Matu, if you are listening, I want you to know that as a person and engineer, I am thoroughly proud of you for changing the landscape of this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the moving Motions that I brought to this House was to honour our sportsmen and women. When I moved the Motion, I was saddened in my heart at the treatment that one Naftali Temu received in the hands of fellow Kenyans. I was saddened that Naftali Temu being the first Kenyan to provoke the playing of the Kenya National Anthem at any Olympic stadium died a nameless and faceless man. In fact, when Naftali Temu died, no senior Government official other than the chief of the area attended his burial. These are things that we want to change. I am not blowing my own trumpet but in Kenya today, there are only 200 registered consulting engineers and yours truly, the Member for Rarieda is one of them. Even my engineering contributions have changed the way things happen in this country. Who knows about that? We must reward people. The other time I heard that someone had brought proposed the name of Kamlesh Pattni as one of the people to be given national honour. I hope to God that he never got a national honour. I asked myself: Have we all gone mad? Who could we even think of honouring the architect of Goldenberg? How quickly people forget. When Goldenberg happened, I was a young engineer just out of Nairobi University. I can tell you that my house budget in Zimmerman Estate was less than Kshs800. This is because before Goldenberg, a packet of milk cost only Kshs3.10 and I needed a packet of milk for two days. A loaf of bread cost only Kshs4.50 and I needed one for two days. To travel from my humble house in Zimmerman to Nairobi by Nyayo Bus was 50 cents and going back in the evening was Kshs1. With a budget of Kshs9, my transport was taken care of. I would walk to Hoggers on Mfangano Street and take a plate of chips for Kshs1.50; boiled egg for 50 cents and bottle for soda for 50 cents. When Pattni came, all that changed. How could somebody even contemplate awarding the architect of Goldenberg, which has taken Kenya decades back and we may never recover maybe in the next ten years?"
}